Takeaway Coffee for a Powerlifting Meet

Working on the desk at a powerlifting meet is a busy job. You need to ensure the lifters get their next attempts in before they run out of time, keep the lifters aware of the lifting order and make sure the result from each attempt is entered, and often all three at the same time. If you add announcing to this as well, it’s a real juggling act. But at least the organisers will often buy you a coffee.

Metalwork from August

The 2011 Queensland Open Powerlifting and Bench Press Competition was held in Jindalee, at the Fitness First gym. Due to a broken arm from August, I am currently unable to compete, at least if I want my squat total to be greater than 20kg. This is why I have helped with the desk and the spreadsheet at the last few events I’ve been to.

The Fitness First in Jindalee is located in the DFO shopping centre. There are not a lot of coffee options there, and considering the only other cafe I saw that morning was a Gloria Jeans, a Coffee Club long black was not to be sneered at.

It was as good as expected – the coffee was not burnt and it was drinkable. Most importantly of all, it helped me get through the whole competition. The free Subway sandwiches for lunch also helped.

Gnarly. I had gathered from some of your tweets that you had some sort of injury, hope it’s all come together OK. I’ve broken my left (gymnastics accident, both bones, compound fracture, about 15 years ago) and right (bicycle accident, about 10 years ago) forearms, and the good news is that they are fully functional now and have been for a pretty long time. I can still feel the metal in my right arm when I do certain things, but i just back off then, and it’s never been a problem.

This weekend I failed to do any stretching and probably got sloppy on my deadlift form and I managed to pull a muscle in my lower back, which is a bummer because I was making some great progress. It feels like the kind of thing that will heal up pretty quickly, but it is going to be a rough week at work.

Sound like you got some serious injuries too over time. Coming back to deadlift what I found was my technique got worse as I fatigued, because my core strength isn’t so good. With that lift, if my technique isn’t feeling food, I do it one rep at a time, it is easier to keep my technique on track that way.

I think that’s exactly right, it happened on my third heavy set of five, and I was beginning to get tired. One at a time is probably the way to go when I get back to it, I might stop doing deadlift sets across for a while.

What I thought at first was a muscle now feels deeper, but also feels like it’s getting better. As much as it annoys me, I think I might have to stay away from squats and deadlifts until it’s 100%. I’d hate to make it any worse even if I have to get weaker in the short term.